It was like a glorious fireball streaking across the worldwide web's sky. It was so bright and beautiful that you knew it wouldn't live long. It was Mirsky's Worst of the Web.
My web surfing experiences began in 1995. One of my earliest finds was Mirsky's Worst. According to the Wikipedia entry,
Mirsky's Worst Of The Web (WOTW) was devoted to showcasing what Mirsky considered "the worst web sites ever". WOTW was the first well-trafficked site to feature "bad" web sites for entertainment purposes. His commentary was short on constructive criticism and long on insulting the web site layout, content and graphics, and sometimes the web designers themselves.
What I remember was gut-hurting hilarity. The sites were bad to the extreme, and Mirsky's commentary was like rich whipped cream on top of a perfect dessert.
Here are a few recollections that I have:
A site that sold horse sausage, complete with lots of gory photos of horses being turned INTO sausage.
A software sales site created by a man (I'll never forget the name, Martin Fung) for whom English was a second, or possibly third language. The site had obscenities innocently dropped into its sales pitches, and a cartoon image of a pool of urine.
A web page at a major university's web site (unfortunately I can't recall which one) touting the convenient locations of nearby liquor stores.
A site that allowed you to purchase a life-sized nude statue of a bodybuilder that was cast from a full mold of the man's body.
A site where a drunken young man told funny anecdotes about his drunken friends. The man was quite obviously drunk while posting.
A medical site that featured a downloadable movie that was created from x-raying the act of defecation.
Mirsky's commentary was pithy and brief, allowing the really bad sites to speak for themselves. Some recipients of Mirsky's thrice-weekly WOTW mentions proudly proclaimed the fact on their sites.
Of course, not everyone loved Mirsky. Check out this site, which may well have qualified as a candidate itself.
Mirsky reportedly got burnt out and quit looking for sites in middle 1996. Mirsky.com became an online t-shirt sales site.
There are certainly some funny sites on the web today, but none as hilarious as Mirsky's, circa 1995, and his tireless searches for the worst that the web had to offer. I miss him, and hope he's doing well.
A few Mirsky WOTW winners still proudly survive: Here, here, here, and here, among others.
